Joel Plaskett, one song at a time

The first track from Joel Plaskett‘s newest album, Scrappy Happiness, was released yesterday. “You’re Mine” is a rollicking, rhyming rock song that loosely brings together the process of making songs and of living a life — aging, youth, the passage of time and some references to Husker Du.

As for the rest of the album? Well, it hasn’t been written yet. The next nine songs will be written, recorded, mixed, mastered — every step of the professional recording process — and then released to CBC Radio 3 and CBC Radio 2’s afternoon show, Drive. One song at a time for the next nine weeks.

The new song can only be heard on CBC’s website, but they’ve released an endearing seven-minute video of the making of “You’re Mine.” More montage than documentary, it does give some insight into the process — including suggesting the song may have been originally written on ukulele.

And Plaskett’s already been tweeting about the progress of the next two songs earlier this afternoon: “Harbour Boys delivered & out on Tues. Old Friends has begun. Rhythm track laid down with authority this aft. #scrappyhappiness continues.”

It’s in an interesting project, particularly in today’s musical climate, which tends to favour the song over the album. Joel Plaskett is revisiting, and then reversing, the model, reverting to a time when artists first released a series of new singles, and then collected them together and called it an album.

What do you think of the first song on Scrappy Happiness?

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1 comment

Dear Joel Plaskett: please stop writing and releasing piles of great songs every three months (or every week, as it now stands). You are making the rest of us look lazy. Sincerely, Other Canadian Singer/Songwriters.